The first high quality
in flight image of a PAK-FA prototype to be released by Sukhoi/KnAAPO
(Sukhoi).

When
a
nation accustomed to decades of projecting power loses control of
large tracts of airspace, that is a strategic disaster. If that
nation loses control of the airspace over its homeland, that is a
strategic catastrophe.

America
has enjoyed air superiority over airspace in locations of its choice
for about 40 years. The F-22A ‘Air Dominance’ Raptor and the
clear intent to establish the next level, air dominance, was an
aircraft thirty years ahead of its time. Its concept design is now
twenty years old, and the aircraft should be in full stride and in
its prime. The Sukhoi PAK-FA is the new, younger, tougher kid on the
block, and is likely to become the nemesis of the F-22A, but still prey
to a more advanced F-22C.

Some
will say, “if we are defeated in the air, the Navy will protect
us”. “With what?”, is the response; “legacy aircraft like
the F/A-18s, or the F-35B/C, with performance worse than the
pre-legacy F-4E, so that its manifold deficiencies must be papered
over by marketing spin like: ‘manoeuvre is irrelevant – let the
missiles do the turning’?”. So when these aircraft are shot down
by the PAK-FA escorting a swarm of Su-35S
Flankers delivering
carrier-killing supersonic missiles, the USN fleet is a sunk cause.

“Oh,
well, the Army will protect us,” is the next response. Pity the
poor Army. No US ground forces in recent times have ever operated
without overhead air superiority, and as professionals, they know the
dire consequences if the enemy controls the air. As an example, an
Su-30/35 can carry three KAB-1500 bombs with a thermobaric fill.
Detonate these in airburst above a dug-in Battalion, and nobody
emerges alive or without serious, debilitating injury. One aircraft,
three bombs, one Battalion.

“Well,
we all know that Russian aircraft are rubbish, and won’t work in a
real war” is the next piece of hubris. America, you have been here
before. Here is what Robert Coram wrote in his biography of John
Boyd, whose ‘energy-manoeuvre’ analysis became the genesis of the
hugely successful air combat aircraft of the latter part of the 20th
century, the F-16 and the F-15 – which has over 100 kills and no
losses in air combat (‘Boyd’, Page 211):

’If there was a turning point,
a time when even the most jingoistic Air Force General at last
understood that Communist forces could build fighter aircraft
superior to anything that America put in the air, it was Vietnam in
1967, the worst year of the war for the Air Force. It finally sank in
that, as Boyd had said for years, the air force had no true
air-to-air fighter. It is said that combat is the ultimate and
unkindest judge of fighter aircraft. That was certainly true in
Vietnam. The long-boasted-about ten-to-one exchange ratio from
Korea sank close to parity in North Vietnam; at one time it even
favored the North Vietnamese. When the war finally ended, one
Air Force pilot would be an ace. North Vietnam would have
sixteen.’

And
so it goes. Yet today, the Gates OSD has killed the only program
that has a chance of developing a capability to engage and defeat the
PAK-FA – the F-22 Raptor, designed from the outset as an ‘air
dominance fighter’. To make matters worse, the Gates OSD has
delivered a ‘double-dog-in-the-manger’ to its allies by not
producing enough F-22A aircraft to protect its own airspace of
interest, let alone airspace of its threatened allies, AND by denying
its allies access to the F-22A through a Foreign Military Sales
export program.

Killing
the Raptor program is transparently a marketing ploy designed to
ensure that the F-35 JSF will be bought simply because it
becomes a forced monopoly in the production and sale of US air combat
aircraft.

The
entry of the PAK-FA could see this backfire big-time on US industry.
Nations like Japan and Israel could well take the attitude: “OK
USA, we are under imminent threat, you cannot protect us with a
meagre 187 F-22As, the F-35 is not up to the task, you won’t sell
us the F-22A, so we will see what Sukhoi has to offer. And we will
save money as the way things are going with the JSF Program, the
PAK-FA will likely cost less than half the price of an F-35 and be
fully operational that much sooner.”

Sukhoi
has negotiated co-production of the PAK-FA with India, and further
co-production deals could the centre of gravity of production
of top-tier air combat aircraft to East Asia. Israel would no doubt
be delighted to participate; its excellent avionics industry already
provides equipment used in several types of Sukhoi combat aircraft.
Operating the PAK-FA would give it access to Regional airspace where
no F-35 would be able to enter and survive.

The
US would be left with the scraps, producing ineffective combat
aircraft that could only be sold by forcing purchases onto the wary
and resentful US Armed Services, who would know that they are now
‘second tier’ and likely to be slaughtered en-masse in a shooting
war.

This
outcome would overturn President Obama’s 28 January 2010 statement
that “I
do not accept second-place for the United States of America”
when it comes to any contest with Russia, India or China.

President
Obama, ask your Intelligence Services for a ‘warts and all’
assessment of the air combat capabilities of the F-22A and the F-35
JSF, and those of the Su-35S and the PAK-FA, and be prepared to change
the course of the Nation to ensure you are developing air
dominating air power1.

The
new Air Power
Australia Analyses
technical analysis paper ‘Assessing
the
Sukhoi
PAK-FA’,
produced by Carlo Kopp and Peter Goon, both of whom are experienced
design engineers with complementary skills in other areas, while
necessarily preliminary because of the recency of the maiden flight
of the PAK-FA, clearly reveals this aircraft will become a giant,
standing on the giant shoulders of the F-22A and the YF-232.

Sukhoi
and the Russian MoD have maintained a clear understanding of the
strategic value of control-of-the-air, and through a cost-effective
and risk mitigating merge of evolutionary and revolutionary
capability development, have drawn from their own knowledge, and
knowledge borrowed from the USA, to produce what could, if left
unchecked, become the world’s deadliest air combat fighter. There
should be no sentimentality about these aircraft, they are killing
machines in a world where it is ‘kill or be killed,’ and
technical systems superiority puts pilots and nations well along the
path to victory.

For
the F-22A to defeat the mature versions of the PAK-FA requires that
the existing production line remain open to provide interim
protection for the US, and export aircraft for its allies, and to
provide the industrial base to develop the F-22C Raptor II, with
advanced capabilities such as an expanded kinematic operating
envelope, more range, improved sensors and missile countermeasures,
and a range of new air-to-air weapons that will be effective in
finding and killing the PAK-FA3.

These
capabilities could be added to the F-22 design in minimal time and at
modest cost. The Raptor needs IRST sensors, more advanced control
surfaces and control authority to provide extreme agility, advanced
countermeasures including apertures for electronic jamming and towed
decoys, 3D thrust vectoring and a variable-cycle engine to improve
thrust and fuel efficiency at all altitudes. Using the Russian
‘evolutionary development’ model rather than the now favoured US rent-seeking ‘start from scratch development’ model,
these
enhancements would be added to a proven and effective aircraft at a
fraction of the cost of development of the failed F-35 JSF, or the
development of an entirely new aircraft. The US has sufficient lead
in this area to stay ahead of the PAK-FA for the foreseeable future
if it acts decisively, and acts now.

And
how to fund the F-22C? Well, the answer has been staring everybody
in the face for ages: kill the deeply troubled F-35A program and
transfer the funds and recoverable technology to future F-22A and
F-22C production – the economies of scale will result in a lower
unit cost, saving around US$50 to US$70 million per aircraft.

The
USMC F-35B? Well maybe, but the Marines should be asked again
whether they really want to be in an F-35B with Su-35S and PAK-FA’s
in the airspace. Perhaps they would feel safer and more effective in
an F-22A or F-22C fleet, as proposed last year by APA4.

And
the USN F-35C? No way – the PAK-FA (and, likely, the Su-35S) will
be carrier based and to counter this, the USN needs a navalised F-22N
developed in parallel with the F-22C to keep those supersonic
anti-ship cruise missiles away from vulnerable surface fleet hulls5.

To
conclude on a lighter note, NATO should assess the PAK-FA as a new
type of air combat aircraft. We can speculate on what ‘F’ word
they will choose, but ‘Fighter’ seems appropriate, for the time
being.